Zigzag Idiot

Some say for reaching higher levels of being, for essence to grow it must feed on false personality/ego. This is done through witness consciousness or being the dispassionate observer and in a sense essence will feed and metabolize ego.. As this happens there is a gain in continuity of consciousness and a reduction in the swing of the emotional pendulum. A higher level of consciousness means a higher level or degree of being. Applicable Maurice Nicoll excerpts from his psychological Commentaries- DIFFERENT LEVELS OF BEING “The Work is to make us live on a higher level of ourselves. For example, suppose you begin to internally consider. You start mak- ing accounts, making out that others owe you, thinking that you are badly treated, worrying about what others think of you, and so on. This is an activity of a lower level in yourself...Now suppose you begin to dislike the inner taste of considering. Then when internal con- sidering starts in you and you notice it you will feel uncomfortable. Why? Because you have already begun to feel what a higher level is like. You feel uncomfortable by reason of the contrast. You have seen something better. You are now in a position to make an inner choice...Better states belong to higher levels of yourself. They are in you, as different levels...But you have to see all this for yourself and get to know where you are in yourself. Ask yourself: ‘Where am I?’ With what thoughts and emotions are you going, with what moods, with what ‘I’s?” V. 1, p. 162 APPLYING THE WORK II “If you want to change your level of Being you have got to see what your level of Being is—that is, what kind of a person you are over a period—or, more strictly, what kind of ‘I’s you allow to take charge of you at different moments, over a period, and remember what you ob- served. If any ‘I’ in you can jump up and speak through your mouth then your state of Being is mechanical and cannot change.” V. 1, p. 168

You’re welcome and Thank you. Will do, maybe in just a subtle way.

Putting it in my own words. In the Ridhwan School this is how reality is framed, so to speak.One is not their thoughts, feelings, or the physical body. The soul is a field of impressionability. This field is One’s presence or Being and some would say the understanding data that’s in our Causal body that gives each individual their uniqueness. We’re a mixture of energies that adds up to our individual vibration number. Being has you could say has different flavors or aspects. Aspects of being or Essence and different qualities and mixtures thereof accounts for each souls uniqueness. Different aspects of essence could be strength, joy, compassion, will, brilliance and so on. I haven’t heard of an exact number of essential aspects but I imagine that there is a limited number. As I just mentioned, brilliance is an aspect that’s related to intelligence. When we become integrated,the twistedness of the ego becomes/matures into one’s unique personal essence, This is the station of what some call the Pearl beyond Price. I don’t speak on behalf of the Ridhwan School. Everything written above is mostly my paraphrasing. So for those who are reading this please take with a grain of salt. @seeking_brilliance, because of your screen name, I’ve had in mind for a while now to send you some excerpts that’s related specifically to the essential aspect of brilliance. I didn’t want to come off as trying to proselytize this path so instead of sending them to you in one of your journals I thought I would just create this post in my own journal. That’s what this post started out as but to begin with I thought it necessary to give a little preamble before sharing the excerpts. So after all that, here they are. Brilliance of Being Usually there are only a few brilliant people around, and the rest of us are brilliant only occasionally. And the people that we consider brilliant have only a drop or two of Brilliancy in their heads. Imagine if we could take such a person and work with him or her and activate the Brilliancy to the extent that the whole body and the whole psyche is immersed in the ocean of Brilliancy. Do you have any idea what kind of being this individual would be? Do you know what kind of intelligence this person would have? This would be a person who is intelligent, who is brilliant, in all of the human capacities, in all areas of functioning. Brilliancy would not only be a quality of the mind, but this person would be Brilliancy, the embodiment of intelligence. This kind of experience can only happen to a realized being, for it is a spiritual experience. It is the experience of the brilliance of Being, the radiance of the Absolute Truth. Brilliancy, pg. 34 The Self-Existing, Unified Synthesis of All Essential Aspects Brilliancy is different from all other essential aspects in that it is a self‑existing, unified synthesis of all essential aspects. When you experience Brilliancy, you feel complete in the sense that all essential aspects are present but are not differentiated. So Brilliancy is the nondifferentiated essential aspect. We can say that it is the source out of which all essential aspects differentiate. That is why in the past I used to call Brilliancy the Essence-of-the-Essence. Its very presence has all the qualities of Essence implicit in it: Strength, Compassion, Love, Clarity, and so on. All of them are there, but completely synthesized as one presence. Brilliancy, pg. 31 Almaas wrote a whole book about Brilliance titled naturally Brilliancy. Actually it’s not one of my favorite books of Almaas’ but Ithought I’d mention it. If readers happen to be interested in more excerpts about Brilliance I’ll leave a link down below. https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/brilliancy

Who’s laughing? Who’s joking? Having scattered or dispersed attention would define sleep pretty well. Not being able to direct ones attention juxtaposed with having the capacity to direct ones attention,,,, makes all the difference in whether one responds consciously or reacts unconsciously. I’ve observed in myself that struggle. I would wager just about everyone here on whatever path they’re on either has or will later notice this phenomena in their inner world at some point. If a person’s attention is drawn by something, most likely it’s going to be emotional in nature and glue-like sticky. Identified completely = Completely asleep. No?

Seeing that the thread Define awakening drew quite a bit of interest, I thought why not a thread on what it is that one awakens from. Deciding to phrase it as spiritual sleep and not just sleep. Charles Tart coined the phrase “cultural consensus trance”. IME, this is in the ballpark of where spiritual sleep is located. I wanted to start off and leave it fairly open to see where everyone goes. If it goes at all. I may chime in later. Okay,, for those who are interested. What is spiritual sleep?

I remember in one of EJ Gold’s books. He said that after awakening, we tend to nap. This goes also with a saying in the Work I’ve heard that after awakening one will never sleep quite as comfortably again. There was one excerpt on spiritual sleep in the Diamond Approach glossary. At least one lineage of the Gurdjieff Work was influential on Almaas’s learning which impacted his Teaching that later developed. I’m pretty sure that Gurdjieff was the first to frame the spiritual sleep of contemporary man as “the terror of the situation”. Just remembered it was a chapter title in Beelzebub’s Tales to his Grandson. Anyway, from the glossary,,,, Recognizing How Lost We Are Unless guidance comes from that source beyond, we keep moving from one place in the conventional dimension to another place in the same dimension. We haven't got the vaguest idea of what awaits us, of what is possible in our potential. We don't know the extent, the depth, the infinite possibilities that lie underneath the surface. So we tend to judge everything by our knowledge, attitudes, and feelings that come from the surface. We don't know that by taking that knowledge to be final knowledge, we identify with the very barriers that prevent the depth from emerging and guiding us. This is why the conventional dimension is a state of spiritual sleep, of being spiritually lost. When we recognize that we are lost and that we cannot move out of our lostness with the conventional knowledge we have, we become aware of the terror of our situation. We recognize just how lost we are and how scary that is. We realize that whatever we try to do -- read books, practice this or that technique, attend this or that workshop, try to figure out things ourselves -- we do not feel any less lost. Our situation really is much more difficult, much more profound, than we allow ourselves to see for a long time. That's why we speak of the terror of the situation -- because it is so frightening to finally realize and admit how lost we are, and how at the mercy we are of so many elements that we have no handle on. The terror of the situation has a lot to do with how much we believe what we think we know, with how much we are caught in the gravity of our planet of conventional reality, believing it to be the centre of the universe -- and sometimes all that exists. We usually do not realize that our experience of reality has to shift only a little bit and all will disappear, leaving us totally terrified. Our only hope is a guidance, a discernment, an indication that comes from a realm beyond. Spacecruiser Inquiry, pg. 210 Good article about the Terror of the situation here- http://sun-angel.com/articles/pw/thework/chapt1.html The following are a few of the sentences that the author of this article put down in bold print. A sincere evaluation of one's capacity to live in the moment will reveal that it is the singular most difficult thing to do. It is possible to expand the brief moments we experience of a more awakened state if we are willing to undertake a deep examination of ourselves and our situation in order to uncover the barriers that exist in our inner world. Verify everything!! Believe nothing "The illusion is not external, but internal. our inner world is a chaotic place inhabited by a gang of disorderly people, we are inhabited by many 'I's, Self-observation is an essential practice for this.

@Someone here I’m in agreement with@BlackMaze about how life changing The Power of Now and A New Earth can be. Tolle recommends in the Power of Now at times to just pick up and read just a little and let it digest. I’ve done that but at times I was compelled to keep reading on an on. I’m sure I’ve read The Power of Now over 20 times starting when it was first printed. A New Earth I’ve reread at least 4-5 times. They’re great books and tools for transformation.

You Don't Need Guilt by Dr. Jim Rosen ©2021 Dr. Jim Rosen Guilt doesn’t come out of the sky and grab you. It is something you put on yourself, like a heavy coat you really don’t want to wear anymore. Guilt is a belief – a very false belief. It’s a way of telling yourself that you are bad to the core and therefore unable to change. Guilt doesn’t fix any of your problems. In fact, it makes you hang onto them. It ties your hands and binds you and puts you in a state of mind where you can’t change. Remember, you’ve told yourself that your doings make you a bad person, and you can’t erase them and make yourself a good person. You can trade it in. You can exchange guilt for a healthy dose of responsibility. Taking responsibility is entirely different than taking on guilt. When you take personal responsibility, you are looking in the mirror and saying, “OK. These thoughts, these behaviors, these emotions are mine. I make them and it’s up to me to change them.” It’s not blame; it’s not guilt. It is looking honestly at your own choices and your ability to make new and different choices. This is a prescription for learning and growing and healing. Now the heavy coat is off, no longer weighing you down.

I just finished redoing my profile. I forget about the thing and hardly ever go there. Took out some Fourth Way links but added a little commentary and links to Maurice Nicoll and Almaas Glossary along with a quote. Speaking of which,,, I almost posted this one in the forum just now but thought better. The Simple Recognition that You Can’t do Anything If we read about the lives of enlightened masters or mystics, we see that often their enlightenment or realization happens when they hit bottom, when they get to the point of being completely helpless and hopeless and incapable. They throw in the towel and completely and truly give up. You can’t fake this; it really has to happen. You have to exhaust all your capacities and truly give up, not out of cynicism or despair but out of the simple recognition that you can’t do anything. When this truly happens, satori is possible and awakening can erupt as true nature manifests with its blazing light. True nature wakes up by revealing to itself the delusion that it is this little self that is trying to practice and get somewhere. And when it sees this, it does not put its energy into the functioning of that little self. It doesn’t put its intelligence and its will into the action of that little self, because that little self can impede the whole process of true nature awakening to itself. It’s not that the little self has the independent power to impede awakening, but because true nature still hasn’t woken up to itself, it is putting all its power into the activity of the little self. So when the little self feels that it can’t do anything, that it is poor in capacity, it is in fact recognizing the power of true nature. The Alchemy of Freedom, pg. 94 Yesterday I was thinking that there could easily be different usages for awakening as there are different usages for ego. The way @Leo Gura uses the term awakening seems slightly different than how it’s used in esoteric Christianity. Not implying that one way is more right than the other. Each has its validity. Just a half baked thought,,,,

It seems that in addition to total surrender peace comes from understanding.

#3“You only have freedom when you realize you have no freedom or free will”.,,,, #4 Are you identified? Which means are you judging yourself? ,,,,

@LastThursday I appreciate your thoughtful reply. I would recommend to anyone who had any interest at all towards it, the I CHING and in particular the revised version called The Oracle of the Cosmic Way. https://www.ichingoracle.com/ If you’ve followed my Journal you’ve seen a bit of its commentary from time to time and my reasoning for abandoning the old version. As you probably know C.G. Jung had an avid interest in it and actually coined the term synchronicity when he wrote the forward for the Wilhelm Baines edition. Referring to the mechanics of how it worked as constrained chance, if I’m remembering right. Terence McKenna, also a student of the I CHING said it was like throwing a coin which had 64 sides,,,, This is just a three minute clip about Gurdjieff and his role playing.

Darn it, @LastThursday You burst my bubble. Although it has been punctured somewhat and slowly leaking over time. Being that I’m naturally math stupid I’ve been riding numerology for all it’s worth for quite a few years. What you say resonates though. At the height of my numerology mania, looking at license plates and anything with numbers on it became obsessive compulsive that would often lead me far away into abstraction. Does the following add up any for you? Lunar essence types energy is passive and negative polarity with the pancreas being the dominant endocrine gland. The chief feature of Lunars often is said to be willfulness. For whatever it’s worth, I’ve typed Leo as being almost archetypal Lunar. You may view this essence typology I’m using in the same light as numerology though. It was born out of the enneagram and the Gurdjieff Work and goes by outer appearance mostly. How people carry their weight and somewhat of how they express themselves. Just thought I’d throw it out here. I enjoy reading your posts. Good day to ya,,,

Maybe even with high wattage,,,,?

I can’t remember ever meeting a stupid person who had any degree of clarity regarding the extent of their own stupidity. If it were to happen, I think chances are it would be someone who was childlike. I don’t know,,,

It becomes so quiet after a snow a lot of times. Snow can bring the experience of wisdom because the outer quiet provokes an inner quiet.

@Aquarius Glad to have your presence here regularly. Have you recently started using cannabis?

It kind of is. But it speaks to the persistence of egoic imagination, dreams and spiritual sleep. In esoteric Christianity it’s said "'To awake,' 'to die,' 'to be born.' These are three successive stages. Similar types of sayings also in Buddhism and Hinduism. But yeah,,, not very cheery.

My condensed version that’s worth about 2 cents- Awakening is the realization of Being as our true nature. At the same time we see we can’t do anything. We’re just a mass of conditioned reactions and instinctual drives that propel us through this world. We live as unguided projectiles and realize our helplessness. Everything just happens. It’s so awful that we die in a certain way after we awaken. There is then the possibility of becoming a twice born. The Diamond Approach Glossary has 11 excerpts about awakening. https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/awakening

@Leo Nordin When are YOU going to get enlightened, what are you waiting for?

The Diamond Approach glossary is an overlooked treasure, IMO. It has the depth to help one make many of the finer distinctions concerning multiple usages of words and often confusing concepts found among many different paths. This in itself can help one to see whenever there is a seeming contradiction between paths but, when seen more objectively, it’s just a misunderstanding of perspectives. Confusion About the Term "Ego" Here we digress to point out a source of confusion about the term “ego.” Readers who know both the spiritual and psychological literatures will find the term freely used in both, but with no general agreement on what the term refers to. This ambiguity often leads to confusion. The literature on spiritual development, on essential or inner development, on all matters of religious concern, generally uses the term “ego” to mean something which is seen as the barrier to spiritual realization. The literature on depth psychology, however, uses the term with a very different meaning. The ego referred to by Freud, and which ego psychology studies, is not the ego which is the barrier to spiritual development. They are two different concepts. The psychoanalytic term “ego” refers, rather, to the functional self, which is the site, organizer, and coordinator of the functions of perception, memory, mobility, and so on. There is, however, a concept in depth psychology and ego psychology that coincides with the ego of spiritual literature: it is called the “ego-identity,” and is sometimes referred to as the sense of self, or the sense of identity. This sense of self or separate identity is the main concern of ego developmental theory. This identity is, in fact, the acme, the most important outcome of ego development. It is ultimately the organizing center of the psychic apparatus. This psychic apparatus includes as one of its units the Freudian ego. In other words, the Freudian ego is part of the mind, is a structure or a structured process in it, while the self is a sense of identity and a center of action. The exact sense in which the ego identity is a barrier to spiritual development will become clear in later chapters. Interdependence Between Ego and Being To know that one is Being, which is not within the realm of images, is such a subtle understanding that it seems impossible for a child to have this knowledge. Enlightenment must wait for the maturity of perception, discrimination and understanding, since it depends on self knowledge. These capacities depend upon concepts. We can say then that ego is needed for enlightenment, since the beginning of conceptualization in childhood is inextricably linked with the development of the ego. So first the ego, which is needed for knowledge and functioning, develops; then the capacity for discriminating knowledge, among other things, leads to the dissolution of the ego. The final result is the life of Being, including the development of functioning within the realm of Being. This interdependence between ego and Being can also be seen in the process of inner metabolism. Ego on its own cannot complete the metabolism of experience and hence cannot bring about complete human development; Being is needed for this process to take place. On the other hand, Being cannot accomplish on its own the whole process of metabolism; it cannot dislodge ego when ego is defensive. From the perspective of the mind, Being can be resisted easily with a slight movement of ego; thus ego must first cooperate by relinquishing its defensive posture. Pearl Beyond Price, pg. 167 from- https://www.diamondapproach.org/glossary/refinery_phrases/ego

I get on my own nerves sometimes. It feels like an in between state of identification once it gets observed. I believe it’s that side of me that stays in the blind spot. It’s the annoying part of me that other people have to endure. Awareness is curative applies here as well. Very much so. As two natured beings we stand between two realities. Some applicable Maurice Nicoll quotes- TWO REALITIES “We stand between two realities, one given by the senses and the other given by our relationship to Higher Centres. One is external and the other is internal and, I would add, eternal. It has often been said that this Work is to prepare the lower centres for the reception of Higher Centres.” V. 4, p. 1322 CLEANING THE MACHINE “The first stages of the Work are sometimes called ‘cleaning the machine.’ . . . The Work tells you more about what not to do than about what to do. Now people often ask: ‘What am I to do?’ On that side the Work says only two definite things: ‘Remember yourself’ and ‘Observe or notice yourself.’ That is what you must try to do. But on the other side the Work says many things about what not to do. It says, for example, that you must try to struggle against being identi- fied, try to struggle with mechanicalness, with mechanical and wrong talking, with every kind of internal considering, with every kind of self-justifying, with all the different pictures of yourself, with your special forms of imagination, with mechanical disliking, with all va- rieties of your self-pity and self-esteem, with your jealousy, with your hatreds, with your vanity, your inner falseness, with your lying, with your self-conceit, with your attitudes, prejudices, and so on.” V. 1, pp. 160-1 INNER STABILITY “Other feelings of oneself are possible that are not derived from life and personality, and these feelings give a man a sense of stability that nothing outside him can take away. And it is from these feelings that a man begins to feel himself free, because they depend on nothing outside him...Personality, roughly speaking, lives by comparison with others...Real ‘I’ does not exist through comparison.” V. 1, pp. 274-5 INNER STABILITY II “We have to make something very strong in ourselves by the help of the Work little by little so that we can withstand the shifting scene, moments of happiness followed by moments of depression, moments of hope followed by moments of despair, in order that we may have a centre of gravity within ourselves . . . a certain point of consciousness that is invulnerable. This is the beginning of the birth of Real I in you which is not influenced by outer circumstances. One then works the other way round—that is, the machine formerly driven by outer events is now worked from within—from what is higher than life.” V. 4, p. 1343 WEAKENING THE HOLD OF PERSONALITY “Now the realization of one’s mechanicalness and the realization of one’s ignorance—for all knowledge leads into mystery—are necessary for any transformation of oneself to take place. Why? Because they weaken the hold of the acquired Personality.” V. 3, p. 1051 ADDING VERSUS TAKING AWAY “The first step in the Work is to begin to free oneself from oneself. This Work is not adding something to oneself but taking away from oneself and it is only what is useless to one’s development that the Work seeks to take away.” V. 2, p. 425 THE POSSIBILITY OF ESCAPE “It is a marvelous thing to find you can move in new directions inter- nally and escape from this spurious invention of yourself. Just say to yourself: ‘Why am I always like this? Why do I always feel this? Why, in short, am I always the same fixed person?’ ” V. 3, p. 983 THE TRAJECTORY OF WORK “The increasing feeling of the Work as stronger than life and all its ups and downs and swinging to and fro between the opposites brings about a state of Self-Remembering that is not due to chance nor is merely a fleeting experience. But for a very long time we mix the Work with our associations, with the machine of personality, which is driven by life and reacts to it mechanically. And this is inevitable because only a gradual separation is possible. A person cannot be torn away suddenly from personality. It would destroy him. So even though we try to work, we identify with the reactions of personality.” V. 1, p. 332 THE TRAJECTORY OF WORK II “You may be sure that once your evaluation of the Work is strong enough and you hear it enough and reflect upon it enough, you will see gradually unfolding the mystery of your own development. This mystery is different in each person. That is why it is so important not to compare yourself with other people. A great deal of negative emotion arises from comparison. Remember always that the Work is equally difficult for everyone and that it does not become easier. It is always difficult. And yet it is not too difficult if one will remember enough and maintain a certain inner strength of will in regard to it.” V. 3, p. 959